Born on this day
Tuesday, July 31, 1951. : One of Australia’s greatest tennis players, Evonne Goolagong, is born.
Evonne Fay Goolagong Cawley was born at Griffith, New South Wales, on 31 July 1951, one of eight children. As a professional tennis player, Goolagong was the first female Aboriginal Australian to achieve prominence in a sport. Goolagong’s tennis career includes 92 pro tournament victories. She won the Australian Open four times, Wimbledon twice, the French Open once, and she represented Australia seven times in the Federation Cup, winning in 1971, 1973 and 1974. In 1971, she was named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. Goolagong retired in 1982, but has still maintained her links with competition tennis in Australia, being appointed captain of the Federation Cup team for 2002.
Australian History
Monday, July 31, 1865. : Queensland’s first railway line opens.
Since the mid-1800s, railways have been crucial to the transportation of freight and passengers in Australia. The first colony to open a railway line was South Australia in May 1854, with a horse-drawn railway operating between Goolwa and Port Elliot. The first colony to open a steam railway line was Victoria. The line, opened in September 1854, ran between Melbourne and Port Melbourne. Construction of the first railway line in New South Wales had begun in 1849, but financial difficulties hampered its completion, and it was not opened until September 1855. South Australia was the third Australian colony to use steam-powered trains, with its first line opened in April 1865.
Queensland’s first railway was initially proposed in 1861 as a wooden railed horse-drawn tramway from Ipswich to Toowoomba. The colony had financial constraints, but these were mitigated when, in 1863, engineer Abram Fitzgibbon proposed using a narrow 1067 mm gauge. The successful tender for building the line went to railway construction company Peto, Brassey and Betts, which had already serviced much of the British network. Construction commenced in February 1864. Later that year, the first locomotives and rollingstock arrived from the Avonside Company of Stratford-on-Avon in England, and were assembled from kit-form at North Ipswich.
The railway line ran from Ipswich westward to Bigges Camp, now Grandchester, a distance of 38.5km. The line was officially opened on 31 July 1865, a day declared as a public holiday. The ceremony was attended by Governor Sir George Bowen, Lady Bowen and several other officials. The first train service left around 10:00am and arrived in Bigges Camp at 11:06am.
Australian History
Tuesday, July 31, 1900. : Western Australia votes to join the Commonwealth of Australia.
Australia was under British rule from the time the First Fleet landed, in 1788, until 1901. Numerous politicians and influential Australians through the years had pushed for federation of the colonies, and self-government. After not being accepted by the states the first time, the amended Commonwealth Constitution was given Royal Assent on 9 July 1900.
Western Australia initially held back from agreeing to join the federation, as Premier and former explorer John Forrest wanted to ensure the economic security of the state, given its distance from the more highly populated eastern states. Western Australia itself was divided over the decision to join, as the people of Albany pushed to be included as part of South Australia, rather than aligning themselves with Perth and Fremantle. Despite this, Forrest’s 31 July 1900 referendum on whether the Western Australians wished to join the rest of the commonwealth was resoundingly accepted throughout the state. Even in Albany, 914 voted “yes” and 67 voted “no”.
Australian History
Thursday, July 31, 1902. : 96 men and boys are killed in Australia’s worst industrial accident at Mount Kembla colliery.
Mount Kembla lies just west of Wollongong in the Illawarra district of New South Wales. European timber-getters were first attracted to the region by the Australian Red Cedar which grew abundantly many years before the earliest land grants were given, in 1817. Oil-bearing shale was first discovered in 1849, leading to the establishment of the first kerosene mine in Australia. Kerosene production continued erratically until 1878, when the kerosene plant closed. That same year, the Mt Kembla Coal & Oil Company was formed to take over the property of the former kerosene company, and to continue the coal mining which had commenced in 1865 to fire the retorts for the kerosene works. The Mount Kembla mine was officially opened in 1883, and in the following decade provided employment for around 250 men and boys.
At 2:03pm on 31 July 1902, the No. 1 shaft at the Mount Kembla colliery was rocked by an explosion when gas and coal dust was ignited by the naked flames of the miners’ torches. Retired coal miner William Stafford stated later that he heard a huge report, followed by the sight of a great tongue of flame at least 12 metres long, accompanied by pieces of iron and wood flying through the air. The explosion was felt in Wollongong, eleven kilometres away. 96 men and boys were killed in what became known as the worst industrial accident in Australian history.
Despite mine manager William Rogers’ assurances that the mine was “absolutely without danger from gases”, an immediate enquiry concluded that the mine was indeed both gassy and dusty. This was confirmed by a royal commission the following year, which determined that only the use of safety lamps instead of flame lights could have saved those killed in the explosion.
The event and those who died are remembered in a ceremony held every year during the Mr Kembla Mining Heritage Festival, which occurs on the first weekend after 31 July.
Australian History
Friday, July 31, 1942. : The town of Mossman in far north Queensland is bombed by the Japanese.
In WWII, the first real attack of the Japanese on an Australian base occurred with the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942. That attack was the first of about 90 attacks that occurred at various places in and around Australia during the war.
Shortly after this initial attack, the northwest coastal towns of Broome and Wyndham also came under fire, followed by Derby a few weeks later. It is less well known that the town of Mossman, near Cairns, was also bombed.
On the night of 31 July 1942, Sub Lieutenant Mizukura dropped eight bombs, thinking that the lights he saw were Cairns. In fact, it was Mossman, and while the other seven bombs have never been recovered, one fell on a sugar cane farm near Saltwater, Mossman. It caused a crater that measured 7 metres wide and a metre deep, and sent flying shrapnel through the window of the nearby farmhouse. Farmer Felice Zullo’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was wounded in the head from shrapnel which entered the house, although she was in her cot at the time.
The child grew up to become Mrs Carmel Emmi, and on 31 July 1991, Mrs Emmi unveiled a plaque on a memorial stone commemorating the attack and her survival. The memorial stone is situated on Bamboo Creek Road, after the turnoff to Whyanbeel.
World History
Tuesday, July 31, 1703. : Author Daniel Defoe is sentenced to the pillory for his declamation of the upper classes – but is bombarded with flowers rather than rotten food.
Daniel Defoe was born Daniel Foe in either 1659 or 1661. Best known for his novel “Robinson Crusoe”, Defoe helped to popularise the concept of the novel, which was a fairly new literary form at the time. Aside from “Robinson Crusoe”, Defoe wrote over five hundred books, articles and journals on topics such as politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural.
Defoe added the aristocratic “De” to the front of his original surname, “Foe”, and entertained high aspirations as a businessman, living with huge debts. A prolific writer and protagonist for social and economic improvement, Defoe was unafraid to satirise the higher classes, attacking them in writing with wit and flair. His writings, together with his political activism, led to his arrest on 31 July 1703. The upper classes took great exception to his pamphlet entitled “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters”.
Following his arrest, Defoe was placed in a pillory. Related to the stocks, a pillory was a method of public humiliation and punishment, in which the victim was secured to a wooden frame which had holes for the head and hands. The public would then usually throw harmful objects and rotten food. Legend has it that in Defoe’s case, however, his friends and audience threw flowers at him, rather than any harmful substances. He was released after three days.
World History
Tuesday, July 31, 1917. : World War I’s Battle of Passchendaele begins, with heavy casualties ultimately on both sides.
The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was one of the major battles of World War I, fought by British, ANZAC, and Canadian soldiers against the Germans. It was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (now Passendale) near the Belgian town of Ypres in West Flanders. The plan was to create a hole in the German lines, advance to the Belgian coast and capture the German submarine bases there. It would have created a decisive corridor to be opened in a crucial area of the front, and it would also have taken pressure off the French forces.
The campaign commenced on 31 July 1917 and continued through to 6 November 1917, when the Canadian Corps gained control of Passchendaele. It was a particularly difficult campaign, as the British preparatory bombardment ripped up the countryside which was already essentially reclaimed swampland. Heavy rain from August onwards produced an impassable terrain of deep “liquid mud”, in which an unknown number of soldiers drowned.
Combined allied casualties reached almost a quarter of a million men, with about the same number lost by the Germans. Around 95,000 British or Australian men were not identified, and another 42,000 bodies never recovered. Known Australian losses were approximately 36,000 from its relatively small population of under five million.
World History
Friday, July 31, 1964. : Ranger 7, the first successful American lunar probe, transmits the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.
The Ranger series of spacecraft was designed to fly straight down towards the surface of the moon, taking photographs during descent. Ranger 7 was the first of the craft to successfully transmit pictures of the moon’s surface. It was launched on 28 July 1964 and impacted the moon on 31 July 1964. Seventeen minutes before it impacted the moon, it captured its first photograph: in all, it returned 4,308 high resolution photographs. This reconnaissance was crucial to the mapping of the moon, and ultimately to the success of the first moon landing.